-The Telegraph A set of numbers, portents of atmospheric changes in the skies over India, had told meteorologist Om Prakash Singh something rare was going to happen over northwest India. It was Thursday, June 13, and a supercomputer that routinely crunches out five-day forecasts had consistently predicted a confluence of two weather systems, likely to take place by the weekend and deliver copious rainfall. As Singh and his colleagues at the India Meteorological...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The devastation in the Garhwal Himalayas was pretty much on predicted lines and man-made. An environmental assessment of the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda rivers three years ago by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had warned of severe hazards both for natural ecology and stabilization of hill slopes along the riverbed, erosion of which has resulted in hundreds of casualties in the flash floods. The report --...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: An expected 2°C rise in the world's average temperatures in the next decades will make India's monsoon highly unpredictable and by 2040, the country will witness a sharp reduction in crop yields due to extreme heat, a report commissioned by the World Bank cautioned on Wednesday. It said shifting rain patterns will leave some areas under water and others without enough water for power generation, irrigation or,...

-The Hindustan Times If there is one defining collage of the ongoing monsoon mayhem in Uttarakhand, it's this: multi-storied concrete houses collapsing like a pack of cards into an angry, wild river and cars and lorries being tossed around in the swirling muddy waters, as if they were plastic toys. As I watched the unfolding drama on TV, I remembered what a green campaigner told me some years ago in Uttarkashi:...

-PTI WASHINGTON: Global warming could lead to more extreme droughts in large parts of India, resulting in widespread food shortages and hardship in the country, in the next few decades, a new World Bank report warned today. The impact of a possible global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius in the next few decades threatens to trap millions of people in poverty, according to the report. The soaring temperatures will also drive regular...